I remember Steve Ballmer falling back on the stat of 400 million Windows OSs sold last year, another 400 million this year. That was at the Nov. 14 Churchill Club dinner. Windows may not be trendy, it may not be chic, but it is out there doing work, lots of plain, ol' document, slide and spreadsheet work. Windows 8 is a break in the familiar user interface -- many Windows users not quite sure about it -- but it will slowly catch on as good for, ah, honest work. So Kevin is calling it about right.Charlie Babcock, InformationWeek

I'm not sure I qualify as an "IT Leader" the way you mean it but I head up IT for a local business unit that is part of a global corporation. Our business (all units) sell to other businesses, not directly to consumers. We run ERP systems, use Sharepoint and Microsoft Office with our PC's. We are just finishing a new PC hardware deployment globally that includes Win 7 (replacing XP) and Office 2010 (replacing Office 2000). It will be years before we deploy Win 8 in any volume. Laptops are on 3 year replacement schedule and desktops a 4 year cycle. No O/S upgrade will be done on old hardware just to move from Win 7 to Win 8. If Win 8 installed on next cycle of hardware, then we will start to use.

But as far as Touch, why? Even outside sales guys who might like lighter device would still struggle to use applications I mentioned above without a keyboard. Touch apps are only good when data entry is light. For that most part that is not business the way manufacturers like us will ever be able to do it. This isn't "Click, Click, sign here with electronic pen".

My 9 year old daughter loves Touch for Angry Birds and other games. My wife loves it for web browsing, Facebook, etc. But for business outside of light sales applications (say e-forms to buy a car or something where you mainly just sign an electronic document), I don't see it ever displacing a keyboard in most business areas. I mainly write code for business systems in my job, I guarantee you Touch will not replace my keyboard use, ever.

With Windows 8, MS has raised the bar on 'classic Windows' performance and security, improving upon the solid Windows 7 foundation. However, the move to the tiles interface has been played very poorly.

With 20/20 hindsight, I would have (1) made the default boot sequence land at the classic desktop, (2) given the classic desktop a very similar look and feel to Windows 7 with only improvements that streamline, simplify, and speed the user's experience, (3) used the Windows key to toggle between the classic desktop and the new "Advanced" tiles desktop, (4) given administrators the ability to operate Windows 8 in a Windows 7 compatible mode and work with IT shops to encourage upgrades for security enhancements without having to devour the entire Windows 8 stack, (5) given "power" users the ability to choose their boot sequence default... once they had discovered the joys of the 'tiles' experience, they could tailor their experience to that functionality. This strategy would preserve the major form and function changes as advanced capabilities about which users would hear buzz and eventually seek to master, while not suffering the disorientation of experiencing 'tiles' first with no idea how to work with Windows 8's split personality.

In a computer store recently, I watched shoppers put hands on Windows 8 laptops for the first time... non-touch and touch screens. In both cases, they were completely befuddled. The sales rep didn't help the MS case when - after being asked what computer he used personally - he confessed to recently switching to Mac. Mind you, his job was to sell computers with Windows OS.

We can thank Apple for that mentality. They made a point out of bragging with how many pieces they sold over the first weekend. Later the Googles and Amazons latched on to that marketing approach and now Microsoft is measured the same way.I don't think it is entirely unfair. Microsoft put W8 beta out and did absolutely nothing with the feedback it collected. There were a few items that were called out by the masses and Microsoft outright rejected fixing that (Start button, bypassing Metro) - something that free tools like ClassicShell can do with ease! If customers are met with such arrogance then Microsoft does not deserve the benefit of doubt. Microsoft had plenty of time and chances to make Win8 not the dysfunctional mess it currently is. It also had plenty of opportunity to design and price the Surface in the sweet spot of the market. That is currently between 200 and 300 Dollars.Sure, adoption rate is to be measured after a few months to come to an honest conclusion. But prematurely calling the death of Win8 is as bogus and stating that 40 million licenses were sold with the intent of making it sound as if 40 million happy users are on Win8. Microsoft's 'sold' numbers are merely the number of licenses issued. By now there should be big blocks of licenses still awaiting a computer to be built for. Also, the 40 million includes all those Win8 licenses that are never used because the systems are upgraded to Win7. The blame goes both ways, but Microsoft is way more in control over success and failure than anyone else. It is incredible how little Microsoft makes out of that. And now they talk about charging people for an annual service pack. Are they serious???

There are really only 2 things wrong with Windows 8 and they are easy to fix. 1. It was a stupid blunder to remove the start button. 2. For desktop use, the user should be able to set the OS to boot to the standard windows desktop instead of Metro.

The Metro interface is great for small, single touch screen implementations, but for desktops, particularly with multiple screens, then Metro is just plain stupid. 99.999% of all desktop users do not have touch screens. And even if they did they are not going to be holding their arms out to touch them for long before their arms fall off. The keyboard and mouse are here to stay until we see some small touchscreens that are designed to lay flat on the table to be used with Windows 8. Even then, the majority of desktop use is going to be on the upright screens, at eye level using mouse and keyboard.

Until there are some killer desktop apps that are designed for Metro, Metro is going to be a flop for the desktop. That doesn't mean that Windows 8 has to be a flop if they just incorporate these 2 small changes. (very, very small).

In the mean time, I am looking at 3rd party solutions like "Classic Shell" (there are several) that add a start button as I consider whether to roll out Windows 8 in our environment. It would be very interesting to see real numbers of desktop implementations instead of sales and then how many of those are using third party addins to make windows 8 usable.

"In a sense, 40 million is a small number in Microsoft terms; the company has sold 630 million Windows 7 licenses worldwide."

To further your point, 630/37 (months that Win 7 has been on the market) = 17 million copies per month. Now obviously, Win 8 cannot keep up the 40 million per month rate, but it's not a terrible number--heck, if MS can avoid significant drop off in adoption rates (impossible, I know), they'll be able to hit their 400 million in a year prediction.

Windows 8 has some serious public perception issues at the moment, with many of the complaints about usability being simply inaccurate. I think Microsoft's marketing has to cut back on the dance numbers and start advertising the ease of use of Windows 8 in order to overcome some of these misconceptions.

Well stated. I agree 100%. Give Microsoft huge marks for what's under the hood sand for the orginality and elegance of the Metro interface. They are working hard to get apps in to their marketplace. Kinect lurks intriguingly in the background. But they seem to have completely missed two key pieces of the puzzle, i.e., continuity of user experience and ease of upgrade.

Microsoft is right to recognize the need for a converged universe and of PC, cloud, mobile, work, leisure. But for many reasons Microsoft they can't follow Apple's script to get there, as they seem to be doing. Apple led from its market strength which was at the time a mobile ecosystem: iOS, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, etc. Microsoft must lead from its strength, which is in fact the desktop and the back end.

Yes, mobile and desktop cross-sell one another once everything clicks, but to get their chain reaction going in time to matter, Microsoft must drive early adoption of Win 8 in the enterprise. I agree with every one of your points on how they should have gone about this.

Instead you land in Metro, it's not intuitive how to get to the standard Windows desktop and when you do get there 50% of what you know in Win 7 does not apply. The excellent security features aren't being advertised as they should and to get them you have to endure the expense and headache of a full upgrade to an alien system that in the end may not be that much more useful in the enterprise than what you've already got.

Small surprise that after testing we've concluded that we'll stand pat for now. We'll eventually follow the hardware, knowing that in the meantime users will be more familiar with the new interface from home purchases. In other words we're a couple of years away at best.

Will we support Win 8 mobile devices? Yes if the demand is there. But iPhones and iPads are the new normal, we're looking at Google and we have a large installed base of Blackberry users who will be allowed to upgrade as it looks now. So they are swimming against the tide.

Absolutely too soon to dig a grave for Windows 8, but these mis-steps are serious.

Apple markets hardware to consumers and niche markets in the enterprise. There sales counts mean something, as indeed they do for Android devices.

Microsoft markets software licenses directed mainly at the enterprise (often via OEM's). There things are more complex, particularly for an OS upgrade. The technical press should get this but if they don't, up to Microsoft to make the case that short term sales counts are not a key metric.

Alas they haven't figured out what their message should be on any level because they didn't have a clear vision and a long term strategy for implementing it. In trying to be all things to all people they have not quite nailed the user experience and they have certainly thumbed their noses at the enterprise when they could least afford to.

Even if numbers look OK in a couple of months, we won't really be able to score this until we can look back in a few years, when likely we'll have a true BYOD environment, to see how many of those D's are running a Microsoft OS.

for ERP if ERP vendors would make transactions like Work Order Completions, Manual Issues, Receipts and Adjustments where you tap in a field and a numeric keypad comes up on the screen, they could tap in the quantities - this would work great. So I can see Touch for the shop floor, distribution channels, etc.... just not the heads down order entry or accounting people

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